


Through Sharpened Teeth

by could-be-calliope (206265)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Daisy is really important to me and her being monster buddies with jon is equally so, Gen, I was just so struck by Jon's isolation this season that I had to write a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22490557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/206265/pseuds/could-be-calliope
Summary: There is no one in the room when Jon begins to breathe.  Somehow, he is disappointed.(Or, coming to terms with becoming an avatar of the Eye in five not-so-easy steps.)
Relationships: (background) Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 5
Kudos: 141





	Through Sharpened Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Look, who needs thematic consistency when I'm instead sleep deprived and super sad about season 4 Jon? I listened to the first two episodes of season 4 and then began frantically writing this. Then I listened to the rest and got even sadder.
> 
> Title from "Monster" by Dodie.

There is no one in the room when Jon begins to breathe.

There is no one in the room, so the only thing that hears that first, shuddering rasp of air into unused lungs is the tape recorder, displayed proudly on the rickety hospital table. Even in his decrepit state, there is a part of Jon that feels it there. It is not a new part, a part gifted to him by the Eye during his long sleep, but a part that was there all along. So, he feels, this is normal. It is normal to be scrutinized by the magnetic strip which curls past those two tiny reels. He shouldn't have expected anything more than that.

There is no one in the room when Jon begins to breathe, and somehow he is disappointed.

~

When Jon finally wakes up, Georgie and Basira are there.

They are speaking to each other in low, intense voices and malcontent radiates off of Georgie. Jon doesn't even have to Look to know this, reading her like this is as easy as it used to be, back in uni.

Basira, though. Basira is outwardly collected as ever and the sleep she hasn't been getting only grates a little on her. Jon is grateful for that. He is glad that his friend is holding strong, and the Archivist is glad that a statement is tucked away inside her bag. The Archivist nudges Jon into action, the tantalizing trace of knowledge lingering in the air around him.

Jon struggles to prop himself up on his elbows and groans something about good questions.

The pair of them jump, startled, and begin to fuss over him. The attention would be comforting if not for the all-too-obvious way their eyes skitter over his form. Scanning for anything out of the ordinary, anything that would finally tip him over into the category of 'truly monstrous'. Jon concentrates, hard, on forcing back the new parts. They bay to be fed in a demand rather than a suggestion, but now isn't the time. Jon asks who made it out alive, and to hear that Tim is lost makes his chest hurt, even as the Eye mocks him for asking a question he already knows the answer to. Basira tells him that Daisy is lost too and now his teeth hurt too. The ache migrates up toward his ears, and he realizes he is clenching his jaw.

By now, Basira's expression has tightened into a blank mask, so Jon forces sympathy onto his own. His throat burns in remembrance, and he ignores the flare of relief as he knows that Daisy won't ever hurt him again.

"I'm sorry," he says, and tries to mean it.

Georgie, in all her familiarity, boils over into anger. Jon senses the worry that had fanned this spark into a flame, even without Knowing it. He’d thought he was attuned to her frustration, but the worry is something else entirely. It had been a good few years when Jon had picked up on every single shred of discomfort Georgie had displayed, he’d taken it as a point of pride. Maybe there were some ways he wasn’t the greatest boyfriend, but making her feel safe and comfortable felt like a bare-minimum standard he could always reach. And he certainly isn’t reaching it now. He’s never seen Georgie afraid, but the discomfort is all too obvious in the careful steadiness of her gaze.

An impulse Jon thought he’d gotten over years ago directs him to hold her, and he nearly gives in before remembering who he is. The ex-boyfriend who never tried hard enough to be present for her, the monster he’s turning into. He decides, very abruptly, that if he were so foolish as to take even a single step toward her right now, he’d be ruining the tentative peace that sat between them. Swallowing past a familiar lump in his throat, Jon slumps back into the bed and folds his arms. He’s so busy digging his fingers into the arms, bony from the six months of sleep, that he doesn’t hear Georgie voice her suspicion that him waking now isn’t some miraculous second chance. When her words crash into him, a second later, Jon doesn’t bother trying to disagree. He knows, now, that he is not the type to be granted second chances.

~

Out of a shaky sense of inevitability, Jon reads the statement. By the end, heaving air into his lungs is less effort and the roughness coating his throat has lessened. He might call it the simple act of speaking for the first time in six months, but the Eye's scorn makes it difficult to take that hope seriously.

The statement concerns zombies, the philosophical kind, and it couldn't be further from the truth. Jon's truth, at least. Where he was once blissfully unaware of the happenings of the people around him, he is now inundated with unearned facts about their lives. At least this will force him to see them more... truly, he decides.

And it does seem to be working just like that. While he would always have been able to see the wariness lurking beneath Basira's even expression--he hopes--the Knowledge clinging to it is new. Jon Knows that Basira recalls, in him, the perfectly polite man she’d encountered on a call out, the one who suddenly turned violent, lurching forward in attack. Her fear is sourced and cited, backed up with evidence. And that is the crux of the matter, as far as one can think on anything beyond the awful grief and dread of further loss.

Jon now comes with _evidence_. While he has never been particularly imposing, his stature and carefully cultivated mannerisms certainly helping that, that hasn't stopped him from seeing wariness in other people, even if it was never him responsible. Now that he Sees, he wonders how anyone at all is able to tolerate the knowledge that they're a source of worry.

Because he certainly is now. The Institute isn't exactly staffed by the most well-adjusted people, and everyone has secrets they can't bear to see released. Everyone has lived in fear of Elias' tendency to wield knowledge as a weapon, and Jon knows all too well that the same fear has been transferred to him. His coworkers-- underlings, the Eye suggests smugly-- are afraid of him and the things he is capable of. Deep down, so is he. 

~

Martin is no different, and Jon wants to kick himself for hoping otherwise. He doesn't quite know why he thought that-- well, that Martin would trust him to be safe. Jon has heard the tape of Elias and Martin, where Elias did nothing more than tell the truth and Martin was left in tears. The sound of that awful satisfied silence, punctuated by Martin's sobs, had made Jon absolutely furious.

He tamps down on that fury now, watching Martin's hands twist around each other nervously. Martin isn't meeting Jon's eyes and Jon doesn't remember if that's a new development, or simply a holdover from the old days, when Jon found himself constantly exasperated by his assistant's incompetence. Now, he can't imagine speaking like that to anyone, never mind someone he… someone who's already been hurt.

Jon finds himself asking how Martin has been, if he's keeping his head above water in the way Jon feels that he himself can't. Martin says yes, he's fine, but there is the same wariness in his voice that Jon sees in his fidgeting hands. He hadn't used his compulsion, not then, which counts as some kind of victory. He doesn't want to do that to Martin. If Martin needs to pretend he's okay, then Jon has no right to pull the truth out of him.

Still, Jon knows it's a lie. It's just as false as the smile Jon pastes onto his unshaven face. He almost tries to touch, picturing the way his fingers would splay across Martin's broad shoulder, the way he would squeeze gently, conveying the reassurance he can’t manage in words. Then he thinks about the fear, the compulsion, the danger he slips closer to every time he disregards someone else's life to feed the Beholding.

Jon pulls his hand back and pretends he doesn't see the flicker of relief in Martin's eyes.

(After this exchange, he doesn’t see Martin for nearly three weeks. When their eyes finally meet in the hall, Martin simply lowers his gaze and hurries off to who-knows-where.)

~

In the end, it seems that Martin isn’t the one to be unafraid. Daisy, of all people, is the one to look Jon dead in the eye and manage a smile that looks sincere, if a little tired. She's been tired ever since Jon pulled her out of the Buried, and after his three day stint, he understands. Being kept away from the light and the fresh air and the people he loves, those were the most difficult parts. These days, Daisy sits quietly in the corner while Jon records his statements, and when she comments on the way his eyes go dark as he reads, it isn't with fear, only a sort of wry amusement.

Jon hates what they've become sometimes. That the two of them, two monsters, can sit in comfortable silence as the humans scurry about the building in terror. It doesn't seem fair, but Jon doesn't know what to do about it. He wishes they weren't afraid, but he can't stop the vague unworldliness that permeates the air around him. It is too much to ignore, he understands. But the inevitability of it all feels far heavier to them, to the avatar of the Eye and the avatar of the Hunt. What can a monster do but chase and consume and ravage? It makes sense.

He only brings it up with Daisy once, barely able to voice that horrible thought. She takes a long second mulling it over, looking as calm as ever, but Jon can See that her blood is up at the mere thought of the chase. Part of the Hunt, Daisy explains haltingly, is viewing one’s prey as different enough to be unworthy of sympathy. If the prey are capable of humanity, here her lips twitch into a smirk, then they can no longer be prey. This is why she doesn't see Jon as another thing to hunt down, even after nearly slitting his throat a year ago. And if Jon can go from prey to ally, then maybe placing anyone else in the category of prey is too bold a claim.

Jon understands, he really does. But it’s far too late for that, for him. Melanie was tormented by awful nightmares because of him, because he had to _feed_ , even if he didn’t know what he was doing then. The line between friend and food source has already been wiped away.

Daisy bobs her head thoughtfully when he says this. Her narrowed eyes have gone distant with the internal tug-of-war teetering back and forth in her mind. Then her gaze focuses and Jon wonders if the yellow cast of her irises had always been there. 

"Do you want me to tell you not to bother? You wouldn't be alive right now if I made that call."

Daisy's familiar lilt is pragmatic as always, even if her focus on Jon's throat is making the old scar burn. He can't help wondering if that might be better, but he knows that's not the point.

"I could still do it, you know, if I wanted to," Daisy adds, her tone curving toward something Jon recognizes intimately. "I won't, but I could."

It's pride, Jon Knows. It's the same pride he feels when he opens his mouth and his words seem to crackle with the power of the Eye. Daisy feels it when her prey cowers helpless at her feet. Without needing to think on it, he feels an echo of Elias' smug superiority as he hurt Melanie and Martin (he hurt _Martin_ , he will not be allowed to do so again). It's the heady rush of power coupled with the relentlessness connection to one's entity.

"I wouldn't stop you," Jon says unwittingly. Stopping the end of the world feels almost pointless when he's so far gone already. He'd need to be ripped apart before he could live in the normal world, the awful hungry parts of him amputated as quickly as possible. "I could," he echoes, though, allowing a sliver of that perfect pointedness creep into his voice.

"I'll rip your throat out first," Daisy snarls in response. She has bristled, somehow, looming slightly larger than her frame should accommodate. The table she sits atop is creaking under the strain of bearing her.

Jon used to be afraid of shows of force like that, but he isn't that man anymore. Instead, he hangs his head low and stares down at his hands. A tape recorder is somersaulting end-over-end in his shaking fingers. It isn't on. 

In the edges of his awareness, he senses Daisy gathering herself back up, reeling in the thing on the leash she keeps so tightly bound. She sighs quietly.

Then she picks her way across the room, weaving around piles of boxes and papers strewn across the floor, and stands in front of Jon. Keeping her movements slow, she eases down to sit on the edge of his desk and reaches out to curl a hand around his forearm. Jon focuses every fibre of his being on going along with it as she pulls him nearer in fits and starts, the strength she’d lost in the Buried ever slow to return. And as Jon’s cheek settles against the wiry muscle of Daisy’s shoulder, he feels a tremor rattle through him. He shuts his eyes when he feels her clutching at the nape of his neck, winding her fingers through the hair that he really has been meaning to get trimmed. And he forces himself to settle into her grasp, because he gets it now, he understands why the contact is important, even if Daisy's touch doesn’t feel totally safe, even if it likely never will. _Allies_ , proclaim the ragged breaths Daisy heaves in and out. _Friends?_ , offers the cautious palm Jon settles against her back. 

The sound Daisy makes is halfway between a whimper and a sob, and Jon clings to her like this space between them is anything more than two monsters pretending to be people. 

**Author's Note:**

> And that's it! Hope you enjoyed this, I certainly enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Also, I wrote this after staring at [some gorgeous art](https://creatrixanimi.tumblr.com/post/190244113142/jon-and-daisy-make-my-heart-hurt-so-big) by [creatrixanimi](https://creatrixanimi.tumblr.com/) for a really long time, everyone go appreciate it!!!


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